During the last segment of a flight of an ownship, the landing phase is generally considered one of the most critical phases for flight safety and operational risk endured by the ownship during a flight. The landing of the ownship requires judgment by the pilot of a host of factors including distance, altitude, effects of wind, and the ownship configuration. During the landing, the pilot needs to maintain the ownship tracking to coordinate with the tracking displayed of the ownship on an ownship cockpit display to the designated runway and this coordination of the tracking with the ownship flight must occur throughout the landing approach and the touchdown with, in instances, the presence of cross-winds. This requires adjustments by the pilot of the ownship flight to establish an appropriate crab angle or a sideslip of the ownship to counter drift in the ownship flight course and heading that may occur. The pilot may, for example, execute a de-crab maneuver when a flare cue is displayed during the approach to align the ownship heading with the runway course or execute this de-crab maneuver at a later period, just before touchdown, if no or not enough prior sideslip technique is exercised during the approach. In addition, the difficulty of such a de-crab maneuver is increased depending on the magnitude of the cross-wind which the ownship experiences during the approach and touchdown; particularly when gusty wind conditions occur and a timely adjustment to the airplane lateral control to compensate for the gusty wind condition is required for a successful landing.
The pilot upon the approach will direct his/her attention to the far end of the runway to try to determine the ownship vertical pitch whereby the pilot uses the far end of the runway as a reference point to determine a flight adjustment or adjustments based on the pilot's judgement and experience of the operational capabilities of the particular ownship to compensate for cross-wind. Additionally, the pilot may rely on a “vertical flare cue” raised to the flight path marker (FPM) to control or decide when to perform a pitch-up maneuver in a vertical direction of an ownship when landing. In a lateral viewpoint during this time the pilot will also use peripheral vision try to perceive the runway centerline movement to perform the additional task of compensating for a heading in a track of misalignment with runway course. However, both these tools are not sufficient aids to assist the pilot and more assistance, especially when there are particularly adverse cross-wind conditions are necessary.
That is, current displays in cockpits do not contain indicators such as an alignment symbol on the display to effectively assist the pilot to maintain alignment of the track and heading of the runway course and to make angular and lateral adjustment to counter cross-winds while the ownship imports to a successful landing and to prevent runway excursions or landing gear damages from misalignments.
Hence, an improved ownship display system and method that displays an alignment symbol to indicate to the pilot a reference of a current and a predicted misalignment between an ownship track angle and runway course heading, and to assist the pilot to make the appropriate lateral, angular and tracking alignment maneuvers with a display or a concurrent display of the heading and tracking symbols of the instrumentation that are currently present on the cockpit display to correct for any misalignment during landing are needed. The present disclosure addresses at least this need.